Today SixApart have launched Movable Type 4.2 and Movable Type Pro.
MT was the first blogging platform that I experienced (after a brief stint with blogger.com) and for a long while it had everything that I needed – however in time it became a little slow and problematic and with the surge in popularity around WordPress among bloggers I switched platforms.
Today’s Movable Type Pro launch marks another important step in the evolution of MT as a platform. I’m yet to test it but from what I see it’s continuing to develop MT in a direction that I’m certain will be attractive to many bloggers – at least on a feature level.
You can read about it’s new features in Anil’s announcement post but in short it’s taking blogs powered with MT Pro in a more ‘social’ direction and makes MT no longer just a blogging platform but one that gives readers of MT Pro blogs the power to become members, set up profiles, rating of content, forums etc.
More and more bloggers are looking to find ways to integrate social networking within their communities and to this point most are having to settle for marrying two platforms together (one blogging platform and one social networking platform). Movable Type now offer a solution for an all in one package – something that will be very tempting for some bloggers.
I’ve really been enjoying WordPress and it’s growing features but this post has certainly caught my interest concerning other options. Thanks for the update!
I wonder if any of MT’s innovations are compelling enough for WordPress to emulate? One thing I noticed was built-in caching, something that you have to use a plugin for in WordPress. MT touts that it does not need so many plugins to do extraordinary things.
It looks like WordPress 2.7, to be released in November, 2008, is going to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary like MT.
WordPress 2.7 information
Ever since MovableType launched MovableType.org and made the personal version of MovableType free it’s become an even better option when it comes to starting a blog. And now even MovableType Pro is free for personal use making it almost better than WordPress, now if they just find a way to foster a Plugin and Theme community like what WordPress has they can take the cake.
I’m still not sure what MovableType Pro Blogger and Business are since you can have ugc now but I still think optional upgrades are a better revenue model for MovableType to compete with WordPress.
I hope the Movable Type will be free for all like wordpress and blogspot
Been trying to install MovableType for 15 mins, it’s way to hard to install when compared to WordPress, I ended up installing it like I would WordPress assuming it would be idiot proof like WordPress but ended up having to delete and re-arrange files.
For those looking to install, the install instructions in a few words:
1. Upload the mt-static to the root folder
2. Put all the cgi files in your cgi-bin (Not everything else)
3. Upload all the other files in the root of the download file to the correct directories of your install (Extra plugins add-ons ect.)
I’m thinking that someone should create a download that’s arranged like the WordPress download where all the files are in the correct folders.
I’m not afraid to tell you that I was not able to install successfully Movabletype…
Long life to WordPress :)
I have to say, having used both MT and WP platforms, I’m torn.
I used to berate Movable Type for a number of reasons, but I think that had more to do with how it had been implemented on a particular web server, rather than issues with the platform itself.
I probably spend about two-thirds of my time using Movable Type, and the other third on WordPress, and both have advantages and disadvantages.
I slightly favour WP, but that’s probably because (except on one blog) I have control over design (worst luck!) and back-end features, whereas on MT it’s all locked down (I’m just a writer). Hence, I get frustrated as I’d love to add new features to MT but can’t.
With the continued buzz surrounding social networking features, I think MT Pro could do well. As I said in my Blog Herald reporting, it’s not impossible to add a lot of these features to other blogging platforms, but they rarely come ready out of the box, and can require a fair amount of technical knowledge and tweaking before they perform as required.
I’ve used MT, WP, but if you really are a power user then ExpressionEngine currently beats them all.
It is harder to get into, because there are so many options, but it sounds like MT with the integrated membership features is really playing catchup with EE rather than differentiating from WP.
Also it has had a robust integrated forum and wiki for over a year. The only thing holding EE back is the theming, which is hardly plug and play (oh and the full version price = but then this comes with invaluable support). This is due to be fixed in the upcoming release of EE 2.0
I’m satisfied with WordPress but for the sake of science I am willing to experiment with others.
Movable type is getting more and more powerful. Other platforms better watch out because movable type is becoming dangerously good. I have worked with movable type a little bit and now I am for sure going to work with it more for clients.
Movable Type was the first real blogging software worth anything. I think that’s both their strength and weakness. On the one hand, they started with a development edge and have a really mature, robust system. On the other hand, now they have to keep supporting that going forward and sometimes that makes it harder for them to implement cool new things.
I also moved from MT to WordPress, back in the days of the Great Licensing Debacle, which I’m afraid people will always remember and bring up. I stick with WordPress because, as others have pointed out, it’s easier to install and, therefore, maintain. Also, it’s totally OpenSource and free, though I did donate money because I thought it was so good. And, most importantly to me at the time, I found it far, far easier to build themes and plugins for WordPress. I love Perl, which is what ran MT, but PHP had a much lower overhead on the servers.
But, there’s always someone coming up with new stuff. I’ve heard about Expression Engine and others, too. So, maybe it’s time to look at the other platforms. The great thing about technology is that it’s always changing! Yea, for innovation!
First of all, Darren, thanks for covering the launch of MT Pro — as you can probably tell, we’re very proud of this launch, and really excited about what the community is doing with the platform.
Duhh and Daniele, we definitely have been working to make MT easier to install, but there’s still room to improve and we’ll try to make it better. Sorry you’ve had a problem with that, but on the plus side, MT has massively better security than WordPress, so at least you’re not having to keep doing installations for constant security holes. :)
Tinh, Movable Type is free and open source if you want to try it, but if you’re looking for a hosted service, we have Vox, which has greatly influenced MT4 and is miles ahead of other free blogging services when it comes to privacy and integrating services like Flickr and YouTube.
Andy Merrett (and others!), if you want to try out MT, there’s a demo install at movabledemo.com and the community’s got other ones running at sites like movabletype4.org as well. But your key point is the important one here: We’re not arguing it wasn’t possible to cobble together these features in the past. Indeed, if and when BuddyPress is eventually released, maybe you’ll be able to take that collection of plugins and graft it onto your WordPress install and make something that works like a community. But if you don’t want to wait until next year, and you don’t want to waste time hunting down a bunch of different code, and you just want a blog or a forum or profiles or a community that just works, then you’re exactly who we made MT Pro for.
Finally, Network Geek, I think a lot of your points are well-taken. With MT4, we made a lot of decisive choices about the road ahead, so we’re not encumbering the platform with a lot of cruft, but we are maintaining backwards compatibility for things like templates. You can take templates from an MT 1.0 blog from 2001 and drop them into MT Pro which came out yesterday, and they’ll just work. We think that’s great. On the other hand, we re-envisioned MT’s information architecture and publishing infrastructure to address exactly the kinds of concerns you have.
And frankly, it’s worked. That’s why MT 4.2 is up to 100x faster at searching, and why your templates can publish 2 to 3 times faster, right out of the box. We do smart things with caching and includes so that we’re only publishing the parts of your pages that change — meaning none of the old waiting around that used to drive people nuts about MT, but all of the benefits of static publishing, so you never get the Blue Screen of Death “Database Connection Error” that WordPress sites throw up when they get on Digg.
In short, we’ve made a lot of progress. As you said, I’m sure there are always people who are going to be stuck in 2004, judging Six Apart or Movable Type by the perceptions of mistakes we made years ago. But frankly, we’ve seen how great the blogging community can be, and we’ve seen how forgiving they’ve been in other situations, so we’re not too worried about that. There’s just far too many cool things that people are doing today, on sites like BoingBoing and the Washington Post and AMC’s Mad Men site and on an uncountable number of smaller personal blogs, and those are ultimately the reason all of us work on Movable Type.
Movable Type looks great but it’s not the best option for me. I’ve been using WordPress since the beginning and have gotten very comfortable with the system and especially the themes. For me to start over would be completely pointless. Maybe I’ll play with it but it just doesn’t appeal to me when there is already a perfect solution for my needs.
Daren,
I love MT even it ‘s difficult to install.. I use to pay their team to install the application for me and it’s worthwhile, because I want to learn how to install by myself. Currently I can install its application in a couple minute. The new MT is big revolution for blogging platform.. MT is much better and far away from WP, as MT generates the html or PHP code by themself while WP did not generate.
Please read http://www.robotstxt.org/faq/bestlisting.html about web robot, it seems the website with file extension is easy to be found by search engine.. My site is great at search engine too even very bad english writing..
I use to try WP, it’s great application. there are a lot of plugin and theme. But I love MT than WP.. I run several website, it seems become higher page ranking in a couple month.
Cheers for MT../
I really believe WordPress is more successful than MT because the language it’s written in is much easier to understand, therefor making it easier to extend and customize.